The Coptic script reads: “Jesus said to them, My wife she
will be able to be my disciple.”

The woman mentioned, called Mary, is thought to be Mary
Magdalene.

The find will reignite fierce debate in the Christian world
over whether Jesus ever got married.

The belief he was abstinent is behind the tradition of
celibate priesthood in the Catholic Church. It will also cast double over
Mary’s biblical role as a sinner.

But in the text Jesus appears to say: “I dwell with her.”

King revealed the find at a conference in Rome.

The full 1.5in by 3in text reads: “The disciples said to Jesus, deny. Mary is
worthy of it Jesus said to them, My wife she will be able to be my disciple.

“Let wicked people swell up As for me, I dwell with her in
order to **** [missing word] an image.”

King believes the text is a copy of a gospel probably
written in Greek in the second century.

She said: “Christian tradition has long held that Jesus was
not married, even though no reliable historical evidence exists to support that
claim.

“This new gospel doesn’t prove that Jesus was married, but
it tells us that the whole question only came up as part of vociferous debates
about sexuality and marriage.

“From the very beginning, Christians disagreed about whether
it was better not to marry but it was over a century after Jesus’s death before
they began appealing to Jesus’s marital status to support their positions.”

However, some experts urged caution.

Bible scholar Ben Witherington said texts from this period
often used “the language of intimacy” while talking about spiritual
relationships.